A visual design lead at Xbox has potentially let everyone in on a secret pertaining to Microsoft's next move with their console division, stating that he is working on the "Xbox neXt" on his LinkedIn profile.

David Gardner, who has previously worked on the Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Xbox SmartGlass, lists "Xbox neXt" among the projects he has helped design. With rumors circulating that Microsoft is working on a more powerful upgrade of the Xbox One, which could potentially be unveiled at this year's E3, the Xbox neXt could be the name of the new console, or at least a placeholder title.

Microsoft hasn't confirmed that it's working on an upgraded version of the Xbox One though Head of Xbox Phil Spencer recently made some comments that suggested this would be the case. Spencer said: "We can effectively feel a little bit more like what we see on PC where I can still go back and run my old Quake and Doom games, but then I can also see the best 4K games coming out."

He concluded: "Hardware innovation continues and software takes advantage. I don't have to jump generation and lose everything I played before."

A recent rumor suggested that Sony was working on a new version of the PS4, dubbed the PS4K, that would boast visual and performance improvements that would make the console capable of playing games in an ultra HD, 4K resolution. If this is to be the case, then Microsoft would likely want to debut a similarly powerful console of its own, and Spencer's comments suggest that the team at Xbox is looking to make this the case.

However, he has also previously stated that the company wouldn't want to make an Xbox 1.5, telling GameInformer:"If we're going to move forward, I want to move forward in big numbers.

"For us, our box is doing well. It performs, it's reliable, the servers are doing well. If we're going to go forward with anything, like I said, I want it to be a really substantial change for people – an upgrade."

While this would point to Microsoft not developing a new version of the Xbox One, it could simply mean that Spencer believes the Xbox neXt is a significant upgrade to the Xbox One and not an incremental update, as many have predicted the rumored PS4K will be. There's also the possibility that the Xbox neXt isn't new hardware at all and is actually a completely different project for the company, but until Microsoft makes an official announcement, this is merely speculation. Hopefully we'll learn more about the Xbox neXt at E3.

Games should be for sure BC if they do though. I'm actually wanting this. It's been fun, but both Sony and MS put out weaker consoles compared to the tech and how fast it's improving. At least imo. We shall see what comes E3.

XB1 system specs, which allow PS4 to outperform XB1 on nearly every game, is one of the all-time blunders in the industry. It easily cost MS far more than RROD did.

It was rumored, before XB1/PS4 launched, that there was an internal struggle within Microsoft between the game people and others on the Xbox team, whom though the TV, Kinect & NFL stuff would push the box more than game performance would. They also targeted 8 GB of RAM early and made other sacrifices to get it, thinking Sony wouldn't be able to offer 8 GB without making similar compromises.

Now that the game people are back in charge, they've done just about everything right, but as long as games keep performing better on the other box, Xbox will continue to lose market-share. In short, a new Xbox is absolutely necessary and the sooner the better!

Microsoft has two new Xbox consoles on the horizon, according to reports on Kotaku that Polygon has corroborated with its own sources. Those sources also told Polygon that one of those new consoles will be over four times more powerful than the current Xbox One and that the announcement at E3 was triggered by, among other things, a faster-than-expected timeline for Sony’s own upgraded PlayStation 4. The other console, a slimmed-down version of the current hardware, will also be getting a redesigned controller.

The latter is scheduled to be revealed at E3 or at an event shortly before, as plans are currently in discussion. Tom Warren at Polygon sister site The Verge reports that the console will be "40 percent smaller than the current model and will likely include 4K support," which will be for video content specifically, though the existing Xbox One models include scaling hardware to output games at various resolutions. Our sources also confirm that this will be the smallest Xbox ever made.

Current plans have the smaller Xbox One scheduled for release this August. Pricing for the system has not been finalized.

The other console, codenamed Scorpio, is unlikely to be released until late 2017, according to Polygon's sources. It will likely be announced in the next month, though plans are somewhat in flux. Like the all-but-confirmed PS4 "Neo," Scorpio represents an evolution of console generations, one that straddles the line somewhat between an entirely new installment of the Xbox platform and a continuation of the existing Xbox One.

Power is a primary concern for Microsoft with Scorpio. The PS4 has remained a constant leader over the Xbox One in this respect, with games on the platform usually running at higher resolution and a higher framerate on the PS4 than their Xbox One counterparts. Microsoft is determined to end this narrative.

The Xbox One is believed to operate a peak target of 1.32 teraflops, compared to the 1.84 teraflop performance numbers attributed to the PS4. Meanwhile, per documents secured by Giant Bomb's Austin Walker — and corroborated by our sources — the PlayStation 4 "Neo," at approximately 2.25 times more powerful than the PS4, is likely to have a peak performance number of 4.14 teraflops.

The current performance target for Microsoft's Scorpio is approximately 6 teraflops.

Previous reports and documentation for Sony's new console have suggested that PS4 games will work on both its current iteration of the system and the Neo, and our sources indicate this is also the case with Scorpio. Kotaku also reports that Scorpio will be "technically capable of supporting the Oculus Rift." Polygon's sources verified that while Scorpio will be technically capable of supporting the Oculus Rift, Microsoft's relationship with the virtual reality headset maker hasn't changed since it was announced last summer.

Microsoft originally had no plans to announce Scorpio in 2016, preferring to wait until next year, possibly at its own event prior to E3 2017. This would be in keeping with the company's existing precedent for new hardware launches. This was timed to combat expected plans by Sony to announce and launch the Neo in 2017. However, after GDC, evidence industry-wide has indicated that Sony's timetable for the Neo either has accelerated or was always intended for this fall. Because of this and other factors, Microsoft is feeling pressure to announce both its new, smaller Xbox One console and the upgraded Scorpio — colloquially referred to internally as Xbox One-Two — at this year's E3, or a last-minute event just prior to the LA convention.

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There are those internally at Microsoft who are sensitive to consumer unrest at the prospect of more powerful hardware so quickly compared to the previous console generation. The Xbox 360 was released in November 2005, the Xbox One in November 2013. Discussions are underway about how best to manage that. A price for Scorpio is also still under active discussion, and is unlikely to be revealed until next year.

More clear, however, is that "universal compatibility" is a core principle for the system. Scorpio is currently being designed to support all Xbox One software.

Much of this information has been rumored for weeks. Well-known Microsoft insider Paul Thurrott,'s site, Thurrott.com originally discussed new Xbox hardware in a post written by Brad Sams in April, which also reported that a new controller was in development (ed's note: This article originally miscredited reporting on Xbox rumors on thurrott.com to Paul Thurrott. We regret the error).

Thurrott also reported on additional expected convergence between Windows 10's gaming platform and the Xbox One, which Kotaku further corroborated. The outlet learned of a specific initiative, codenamed Project Helix, to launch day and date versions of Xbox One software on Windows 10 as well, though this is already being borne out with the PC launch of Quantum Break in March and the simultaneous launch of Halo Wars 2 on Windows 10 and Xbox One later this year.

Xbox head Phil Spencer, during a keynote at an event in February of this year, suggested the possibility of new Xbox hardware that followed a different path from previous generational transitions. "We can effectively feel a little bit more like we see on PC, where I can still go back and run my old Doom and Quake games that I used to play years ago but I can still see the best 4K games come out and my library is always with me," Spencer said. "Hardware innovation continues while the software innovation is able to take advantage and I don't have to jump a generation and lose everything that I played on before."

In a follow-up interview after Spencer's keynote, the Xbox head elaborated on the company's philosophy for a new approach to hardware with Polygon's Nick Robinson. "We look at these other ecosystems out there like mobile, tablet and PC and we see that they have a very continuous evolution cycle in hardware, whereas between console generations most of the evolution is making it cheaper and potentially making it smaller," Spencer said. "Both are meaningful but don't make the games play any better. If you look at PC specifically and see the evolution that happens there, there's no reason why console can't ride that same curve.

"I look at the ecosystem that a console sits in and I think that it should have the capability of more iteration on hardware capability. Sony is doing this with VR and adding VR capabilities mid-cycle to the PlayStation 4 and they are doing that by adding another box. I don't mean that as a negative. But it's not changing what the core console is about.

"For consoles in general it's more important now than it's ever been, because you have so many of these other platforms that are around. It used to be that when you bought your console you were way ahead of the price performance curve by so much, relative to a PC. But now PCs are inexpensive and your phones are getting more and more capable.

"I still think a console is the best price to performance deal that is out there but when you look at the evolution ... I'm not going to announce our road map for hardware ... but what I wanted to say on stage for people when they see this vision of ours and question our commitment to console I want to make sure that people see that what we are doing enables us to be more committed to what consoles are about than we've ever been and innovate more consistently than we ever have. That's the key for me."

“We’re building a beast,” he said.“It’s gonna be the most powerful console ever made, and as a guy who was here when we built the original Xbox, that being such a powerful box, and we pioneered with Xbox Live, and some of those innovative games, it really feels like we’re getting back to our roots. And I think the team here, we’re all gamers and we love what we do, and I’ve never seen the morale this high. People are fired up about what we’re delivering this year for our fans, and the vision of what we’re doing with Project Scorpio. It’s a pretty special time.”

"As we landed on 4K, Andrew [Goossen] and team did a pretty deep analysis," Gammill continues. "We have this developer tool called PIX [Performance Investigator for Xbox]. It lets us do some GPU trace capture. He and his team did a really deep analysis across a breadth of titles with the goal that any 900p or better title would be able to easily run at frame-rate at 4K on Scorpio. That was our big stake in the ground, and so with that we began our work speccing out what the Scorpio Engine is. It's not a process of calling up AMD and saying I'll take this part, this part and this part. A lot of really specific custom work went into this."

Traditionally, games creators have to work to the characteristics of the console platform, but because Scorpio's design brief was to scale up existing titles to 4K, the hardware team could profile actual, shipping games and customise the design to fit common characteristics. PIX provided the data that was then fed into a hardware emulator, where the Microsoft team could then see how those titles would run on prospective Scorpio hardware. Multiple configurations could be tested in order to get the best balance.

"What we did was to take PIX captures from all of our top developers... By hand we went through them and then extrapolated what the work involved would be for that game to support a 4K render resolution," says Andrew Goossen, Technical Fellow, Graphics. "Now we had a model for all of our top-selling Xbox One games where we could tweak the configuration for the number of CUs, the clock, the memory bandwidth, the number of render back-ends, the number of shader engines, the cache size. We could tweak our design and figure out what was the most optimal configuration. It was incredibly valuable for us to be able to make those trade-offs, because ultimately these Xbox One titles are the ones that we... wanted to get up to 4K."